April/May 1993, Page 41

Myths and Facts

(In refuting myths and half-truths about the Mideast, sometimes one doesn't have to look beyond the mainstream media that help perpetuate them.)

Mideast Terror Networks in the U.S.

Myth: "The man whose work killed five, injured 1,000 and did $1 billion in damage to New York's economy. . .had links to a fundamentalist group in the Middle East . . . In response to crackdowns in moderate Arab countries, these organizations have shifted to the U.S., developing extensive infrastructures here to coordinate terrorist activities in their own countries. According to intelligence and law enforcement sources, in the past five years these networks have come to recruit, provide command-and-control, raise funds and direct terrorist attacks in their own countries."

—Steven Emerson, The Wall Street Journal, March 5, 1993

Fact: "Palestinians in the occupied territories do indeed rely on financial remittances from Arab Americans. Such monies are of course a tiny echo of the very large sums sent to Israel by American Jews, but successive Israeli governments have long sought to block outside contributions to Palestinians as part of their overall objective of making life so wretched that these Arabs will move elsewhere."

—Alexander Cockburn, Los Angeles Times, March 5, 1993

Did Syrians Shell Israeli Farmers From the Golan Heights?

Myth: "For nearly 20 years, Syrian troops sat up here and fired down at Ein Gev, at farmers in the fields, at children at play, at people leading peaceful lives. They might call it war against the 'Zionist entity,' but I'd call it murder, the murder of people who only want to live in peace."

—Golan Heights Jewish settler Joel Sheinfeld, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 4, 1993

Fact: "This oft-repeated claim about Syrian shelling ignores the repeated attacks by Israeli kibbutzniks and border police against Palestinian and Syrian villagers who were indigenous to the Syrian-Israeli demilitarized zone, which led to the shelling in question. The demilitarized zone, set up after the 1947-48 war, consists of three small patches of land along the then Syrian-Israeli border—a total of 66.5 square kilometers—populated by both Arab and Israeli villagers. According to the General Armistice Agreement of 1949, sovereignty over this area was to be determined at a later date, in the context of an overall peace agreement.

"Israel had failed to conquer these areas during the war and was determined to do so gradually in the years that followed, starting as early as 1951. As a result, the U.N. Truce Supervision Organization, assigned to monitor the armistice, recorded thousands of incidents of major and minor clashes across the Syrian-Israeli border, most of which stemmed from Israeli encroachments onto Arab-owned village lands.

"The typical incident involved small groups of Israeli kibbutzniks—armed with weapons illegally brought into the demilitarized zone—moving their tractors or other equipment onto Arab-owned farmlands to use these lands for their own agricultural projects. Arab farmers . . . resisted by firing at whoever or whatever was trespassing on their property, followed by return fire from the kibbutzniks, joined by Israeli border police, on an even larger scale.

"The Syrians, atop the Golan Heights, would then come to the aid of the beleaguered Arab villagers by shelling in the direction of the kibbutz from which the original attack came. This would be followed by Israeli artillery fire and air bombardments, often inside Syria proper. Specific, major incidents include, but are by no means limited to, the 1951 expulsion by Israeli forces of some 2,000 Arab civilians from three villages in the demilitarized zone, never to return, and the 1960 Israeli occupation of the entire village of Tawafiq inside the zone, which soldiers could only enter after cutting through the many layers of barbed wire the villagers had erected to protect their homes and farmland. In this case, it was only Syrian shelling from the Golan Heights that saved Tawafiq; and it was that shelling that finally forced Israeli troops to withdraw from the community.

"These events, and many more like them, have been extensively documented by four consecutive UNTSO chiefs of staff who were responsible for keeping peace and reporting armistice violations on both sides . . . To put this period (1949-1967) in its proper historical perspective, then, what is now termed by Israel's advocates as 'Syrian shelling from the Golan Heights' represents only a portion of what was recorded by U.N. observers at the time as 'mutual exchanges of fire on both sides,' caused mainly by Israel's campaign to gradually annex Arab-owned land inside the demilitarized zone. . .

"It is clear from the historical record that the phrase 'Syrian shelling from the Golan Heights' did not even exist at the time and does not appear in U.N. records. That is because the point of origin—the Golan— was in itself not relevant, and because the real problem of the time was Israeli land encroachment, of which the Syrian responses were but a result. The phrase, in fact, came into use only after the 1967 war, by people seeking to justify Israel's retention of that particular territory."

—Research Director Laura Drake of the Council for the National Interest, Washington Post, Feb. 20, 1993

Who is in Compliance With the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?

Myth: "CIA Director James Woolsey criticized Middle Eastern countries for their failure to sign and comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. He listed Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Algeria as countries attempting to acquire nuclear, chemical, and biological weaponry and technology. "

—Near East Report (AIPAC-affiliated weekly), March 8, 1993

Fact: "Committee Chairman John Glenn (D-OH) asked Woolsey to confirm a declassified Soviet intelligence report claiming that Israel possesses 100 to 200 nuclear weapons. Woolsey declined comment."

—Near East Report, March 8, 1993

How Strongly Do Islamic States Feel About Bosnia?

Myth: "Islamic states are unhappy with the suffering of Muslims in Bosnia. But they have neither the inclination nor the ability for serious military involvement. Nor is there much risk of Muslim economic retaliation—say, an oil embargo. Bosnia seems to be more of an emotional issue to American pundits than to politicians in Cairo, Islamabad or Syria."

—Dimitri K. Simes, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, New York Times, March 10, 1993

Fact: "What has happened to the new world order we were promised? Were the Bosnians just left out accidentally? . . . One can't say the international community has not been shocked by what is going on. But after the hundredth photographic image of grief, the story-line quality of another Belsen, the human consciousness is beginning a process toward immunity.

"However, there must come a time when the failure of diplomacy is admitted and the good stand up and face evil. A simple act of universal defiance is needed. How many rolled out bodies do U. N. inspectors have to see? How many charred homes?"

—Chief Editor Khaled Al-Maeena, Arab News, Jeddah, Nov. 5, 1992